


She Navigated Off His Smile Alone

by clonethemidwife



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:08:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22392265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clonethemidwife/pseuds/clonethemidwife
Summary: Modern Turnadette for @thatginchygal
Relationships: Bernadette | Shelagh Turner & Patrick Turner
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	She Navigated Off His Smile Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Modern Turnadette for @thatginchygal

Midwives were more important than ever, not that they were paid well, or that the programs were advertised. It was common now to find people training as midwives when they’d wanted to be anything but. Shelagh nodded her head sadly to herself, wondering how she’d been fortunate enough to secure training from passionate midwives, to later secure a great job with passionate midwives, and a caring GP…. but that thought brought her thoughts in dramatically different directions. Directions which found both herself and her patients in need of qualified midwives. Still, Shelagh couldn’t shake the smile from her face. She’d recently returned to work following her first labor and delivery, though young Teddy was her third child. Patrick was waiting for her outside the locker room, she knew, but she hesitated a few moments longer. Today’s appointments would be filled with some of their more challenging mothers, and as difficult as her own labor had been, Shelagh knew that today would bring more difficult labors, and that not all of them would have the outcome that was hoped for. Patrick had accompanied her to work today for that very reason. He’d established himself as something of a specialist in the area of premature and otherwise medically fragile newborns, and one of her patients had had a series of troubling scans. Shelagh had come home after each scan and cried over each of her children, and deeply into Patrick’s embrace. She knew she shouldn’t imagine things that might have been, but it was impossible for her not to now. She couldn’t imagine a world in which she didn’t have her children, and to break the news to a woman laying where she had not long before that her baby may not survive had been devastating. Patrick had managed to get himself assigned to the case, and Shelagh knew better than to ask questions. She simply thanked him, and today as they drove in, she’d kept his hand clutched tightly in hers. Today was meant to be the final scan, but there had been Braxton Hicks, and then the membranes had ruptured about eight weeks early, and no one knew how that might effect the newborn’s odds in the outside world.  
As Shelagh exited the locker room, Patrick reached out and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, then held out a travel cup tea for her. They smiled at each other, the moment a small security in the unrelenting daily storm of life and death she sometimes felt she navigated off of his smile alone.


End file.
